Lane v. State

743 S.W.2d 617, 1987 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 729, 1987 WL 2313
CourtCourt of Criminal Appeals of Texas
DecidedDecember 9, 1987
Docket69254
StatusPublished
Cited by55 cases

This text of 743 S.W.2d 617 (Lane v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Lane v. State, 743 S.W.2d 617, 1987 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 729, 1987 WL 2313 (Tex. 1987).

Opinions

OPINION

WHITE, Judge.

Appellant was convicted in Dallas County of capital murder. See V.T.C.A., Penal Code Sec. 19.03(a)(2). After the jury made an affirmative finding of the special issues in Art. 37.071, V.A.C.C.P., the trial court imposed the penalty of death by lethal injection. This case is before us on direct appeal.

The appellant presents us with sixty points of error, of which fifty complain of alleged errors during voir dire. A review of the facts is necessary.

On November 20, 1982, Patricia Morgan worked as a full-time cashier at the Winn-Dixie store on Abrams Blvd. in Dallas County. At 7:30 in the evening of that day, she had cleared the store’s cash registers and was counting the day's receipts in the cashier’s office. The cashier’s office was a booth with walls that were six feet high, and did not reach to the ceiling. Ms. Morgan testified that she saw the appellant [618]*618pop up over the wall with his head, shoulders and arms visible to her. The appellant pointed a .357 magnum at Ms. Morgan, threw a paper bag at her, and told her, “Put the money in the bag, bitch.”

Morgan testified that she put $3,000.00 in the bag and gave it back to appellant. He hopped down from the booth. While Morgan went to the phone in her booth to call the police, she watched the appellant walk over to the entrance to the store. The electronic doors wouldn’t open to allow the appellant to exit because he was attempting to go out the “entrance” door. Morgan watched the appellant start to kick the doors. She then saw the deceased, Tammy Davis, approach the appellant. On the stand, Morgan testified there was a white button next to the door that would open it.

Tammy Davis was a high school senior who worked part-time at the Winn-Dixie as a cashier. On the evening of November 20, 1982, she was working her usual shift. Three witnesses at the scene testified to what happened after the appellant began to kick the entrance doors.

Tammy Davis approached the appellant from the rear. She told the appellant, “No, sir, you need to push the white ...” The witnesses disagreed as to whether she finished the sentence.

They agreed that when Tammy Davis began to speak to the appellant, apparently unaware that he had robbed Ms. Morgan, the appellant quickly turned around. Without hesitation, he raised his gun, held it straight out, and shot Tammy Davis once in the head from very close range. She died from this gunshot wound.

After shooting Tammy Davis, appellant fled from the store. A witness saw him get into an automobile driven by a second person. This witness gave the description of the automobile to the police.

Dallas police officer Tommy Joe Ames was on patrol that evening in the vicinity of the Winn-Dixie store. He was training a rookie police officer who was riding with him. Ames spotted the appellant’s escape vehicle and began to pursue him. At one point during the chase, the passenger in the escape vehicle came out of his window and leaned over the top of the car. He then shot at Ames and the rookie officer five times.

The police chased the vehicle through a residential area until it stopped and both men inside it attempted to escape on foot. Ames chased the passenger on foot and caught him. He identified the passenger as the appellant. Ames recovered a Colt Python .357 Magnum and a paper bag containing approximately $3,333.00.

The appellant took the stand and testified in his own defense. Appellant stated that he did not intend to shoot Tammy Davis. According to him, when he turned around, he only shook the gun in her face. He stated that his .357 had a hair trigger and must have discharged accidentally.

The State disputed this testimony. Their eye-witnesses did not see any shaking of the gun. A firearms examiner testified that the .357 did not have a hair trigger, but that it was stable within its normal operating range. A Dallas County jail inmate, Bruce Waggoner, testified that appellant told him that he “shot the bitch because I thought she was going to try to stop me or something.” Appellant also allegedly told Waggoner, “That’s what the bitch gets for being there.”

The jury disbelieved the appellant and decided he was guilty of the capital murder of Tammy Davis.

At the punishment hearing, the State introduced appellant’s criminal history into evidence. Appellant had prior convictions for robbery and assault with a deadly weapon in Colorado in 1970 and for murder in Louisiana in 1973. Appellant received a fifteen year prison sentence in the latter, and was released in June of 1981.

During the punishment hearing, inmate Bruce Waggoner testified for the State. According to Waggoner, appellant found out that a member of the District Attorney’s office called his mother to ask her some questions. Appellant told Waggoner he would kill the person who called his mother. Waggoner also testified that appellant told him that Tammy Davis’ father [619]*619called his girlfriend and upset her. Appellant stated he would kill Davis’ father for this. The defense rested without putting on evidence. The jury found the evidence sufficient to support affirmative answers to Special Issues Numbers One and Two.

We reverse the judgment of the trial court for error committed during the selection of the jury.

In point of error eighteen, the appellant complained that the trial court erred when it allowed the State to tell prospective juror Leathers that a capital murder has been committed when an accused violates the provisions of V.T.G.A., Penal Code Sec. 19.02(a)(2) or (3). The appellant alleged this misstatement of the law occurred when the State attempted to create a distinction in the mind of the juror between a finding of intentional conduct at the guilt stage of the trial, and a finding of deliberate conduct at the punishment stage of the trial. The appellant made the same argument concerning the voir dire of seven other jurors, in points of error nineteen through twenty-five.

We will review the voir dire of prospective juror Leathers:

“Q. (State’s Counsel) Okay. Let’s talk about Issue Number 1 and this says, Was the conduct that caused the death deliberate and with a reasonable expectation that death would result? Let’s stop just a moment here and kind of break this one down. You found the person guilty of capital murder and you agreed with me they are asking something different here in this first issue as well as the other ones. If they wanted to ask you if the defendant was guilty again, they could have done that, so they are asking you something different than is he guilty, and Judge Meier told you that the words intentional and deliberate mean different things. Are you with me there?
“A. Yeah, I think so.
“Q. Okay. Now, so they are asking you to find a different set of facts because when you found the fellow guilty, you found him guilty of intentionally causing someone’s death by shooting them with a gun in a robbery. You found he did that. Now they are asking you a little bit different shade of question in that they’re saying was the conduct of the defendant deliberate and with a reasonable expectation that death would result.
Let me give you a fact example here that might help. Let’s say I go into a convenience store to rob Mr.

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Bluebook (online)
743 S.W.2d 617, 1987 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 729, 1987 WL 2313, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/lane-v-state-texcrimapp-1987.